Risky Rick in Dangerous Traps (June 25th)

[Ikrananka]

 

What do you mean exactly? The wire I put in I did so at that angle to maximize the attachment point and again the tab that the center is supposed to attach to, is missing on this CVs bottom RF shield. I can see where it was literally cut and using a larger wire would impede the cartridge from sitting down properly. Speaking of... I have found another odd issue that I hadn't noticed until just now trying to play Risky Rick again. It would seam the cartridge PCB on the game sits inside a little high because I noticed that the Risky Rick cart doesn't seem to sit as firmly in my CV as other games do. Or the fingers on the PCB for the game might be recessed a bit too far back. Not sure which, but because of this I have to really fiddle with the game to get it to fire up. It usually will start with a black screen and high pitch sound of some sort and takes me several tries of re-inserting it before it wants to come up. Once it does I can move the cart back and forth and the game doesn't crash..so not sure what that is about. And before everyone starts telling me the clean the cartridge port...trust me that has been done and it is squeaky clean. All other games seem to fire up without issue so I'm not sure if it something with the no delay bios I've added or another issue to track down or something with the cart itself?

 

As for the no delay bios, I have no idea what version it is. I got the Console5 kit for it about a month ago and it along with the recap was my saturday project.

 

I don't have any of the problems you're having with your Risky Rick cart. So I suspect it must be something specific with your system or with your specific Risky Rick cart.

 

If you fire up Sewer Sam and get garbled graphics when trying to start the game and/or you get static instead of spoken words in Squish'Em Sam then you have the original no delay bios. If Sewer Sam displays and plays fine and you get the voices in Squish'Em Sam then you have the Youki patched no delay bios. More info here.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

that wire was only to test easily at it has crocodil clips on each end. the perminant solution will be better (probably connect pin 13 to pin 29 whuch is propper groubd on the cartridge connector which should be the shortest wire and give the less interferance

 

 

i think he means the track width

 

you are basically connecting a thin wire to a fat trace

Ah..gotcha. Well it works just fine and is more connection than what was there before which was nothing at all. Also on this one I had to be careful as there isn't much pad to solder to around that screw head and only at the base where there really enough to remove some solder mask to solder to. Even with this the cartridge comes right up to that solder point so anything thicker would have it more difficult to seat carts in properly.

 

I went ahead and undid the no delay bios. It is an older version as Serwer sam will load up but then after choosing the starting player count and level it will then lock up to a screen full of vertical lines that will move as you move the controller. Also while still not wanting to start exactly on the mark, Ricky Rick does seem to start more reliably with the original bios back in so I will leave that in for now and the Ultimate SD makes most games start up quickly anyway on its own, so I will just stick with it the way it is.

 

Now..how the hell do I get past that part on the third screen of the Egyptian level just above the spot with the falling ceiling? Can seem to jump just right to pass through the spikes and even when I did once, another setup of spike popped up from the seemingly safe floor to kill me anyway? argh...

[Swami]

 

Testing via the pins verifies for certain whether pin 13 of the cartridge slot is grounded - this appears to be the critical requirement. It's not the screws that need the continuity with the RF shield but the ground plane(s) on the motherboard and ultimately pin 13 of the cart connector. Let us know how you get on.

Trying this out is next on my list. Got pneumonia just after new year and the fatigue stays strangely with you for weeks after the antibiotics kill the problem.

[Swami]

 

Testing via the pins verifies for certain whether pin 13 of the cartridge slot is grounded - this appears to be the critical requirement. It's not the screws that need the continuity with the RF shield but the ground plane(s) on the motherboard and ultimately pin 13 of the cart connector. Let us know how you get on.

 

I have good continuity between all the points with arrows in your images, but still only get a black or dark green screen with a random tone for Risky Rick on both my Stock and a composite modded colecovision. The other composite modded colecovision I own plays it okay. When I get my Phoenix, it would nice to be able to sell one or both being able to play all games, but I suppose it is not compulsory, since they work with everything else.

[ArcadeVision]

 

I have good continuity between all the points with arrows in your images, but still only get a black or dark green screen with a random tone for Risky Rick on both my Stock and a composite modded colecovision. The other composite modded colecovision I own plays it okay. When I get my Phoenix, it would nice to be able to sell one or both being able to play all games, but I suppose it is not compulsory, since they work with everything else.

 

 

On Jully 27th 2018, you sent us this answer: "No problem. Risky rick still works fine in the other ColecoVision. Something of a mystery though."

[Swami]

 

 

On Jully 27th 2018, you sent us this answer: "No problem. Risky rick still works fine in the other ColecoVision. Something of a mystery though."

Right. The cart does work on another system. The cart does not need replacing. I currently have three Colecovisions, one stock and two composite. RR works on one of the composites but not the other two...although every other game works on all three.

contact@arcadevision.net ArcadeVision <contact@arcadevision.net>

Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:13 PM

 

to me

Hello,

I will receive a modded 5V ColecoVision in 1 week. So, I will be able to really see what going wrong by myself.

I hope that your game cartridge was not destroyed... No worry, I will replace it if required.

Richard

---

Sw...s <s...l.com>

Sun, Jul 22, 2018, 5:37 PM

 

to contact@arcadevision.net

No problem. Risky rick still works fine in the other ColecoVision. Something of a mystery though.

[Great Hierophant]

If anyone wants to know in technical terms why Risky Rick fails in certain emulators, dumpers, flash carts and modded consoles, the answer can be found here: http://blog.kevtris.org/?p=175

[128Kgames]

On 7/29/2019 at 4:44 PM, Great Hierophant said:

If anyone wants to know in technical terms why Risky Rick fails in certain emulators, dumpers, flash carts and modded consoles, the answer can be found here: http://blog.kevtris.org/?p=175

It should be interesting to see if this plays on the Phoenix when it finally comes out.

[retroillucid]

8 minutes ago, 128Kgames said:

It should be interesting to see if this plays on the Phoenix when it finally comes out.

Yes, 
It's been working for awhile now
 

[128Kgames]

2 minutes ago, retroillucid said:

Yes, 
It's been working for awhile now
 

Cool, thanks J-F.

[Serguei2]

On 7/29/2019 at 4:44 PM, Great Hierophant said:

If anyone wants to know in technical terms why Risky Rick fails in certain emulators, dumpers, flash carts and modded consoles, the answer can be found here: http://blog.kevtris.org/?p=175

 

So it's a kind of copy protection, preventing to play from emulators, or from sd card.

[Great Hierophant]

The full version works just fine with the Mega Sg, as I demonstrate here : 

 

[usar666]

18 hours ago, Great Hierophant said:

The full version works just fine with the Mega Sg, as I demonstrate here : 

 

Great ! 

[chart45]

On 7/30/2019 at 11:23 AM, Great Hierophant said:

The full version works just fine with the Mega Sg, as I demonstrate here : 

 

do you have a similar way to dump gradius? i have the dumper and all those cart that dont dump  like ghost buster and secret of moai  so i will add the ground to pin 13 for  risky rick

[harlock76]

will there gonna be carts run of risky rick  game ? or would the rom be available as purchase ?

[Shawn]

13 minutes ago, harlock76 said:

will there gonna be carts run of risky rick  game ? or would the rom be available as purchase ?

 

I was told there is a demo version but I have no clue if the author plans to sell the full version in binary format.

[Swami]

The link to kevtris was redacted, so someone was apparently upset. Personally, I couldn't begin to disassemble whatever.

[Swami]

7 hours ago, Shawn said:

 

I was told there is a demo version but I have no clue if the author plans to sell the full version in binary format.

Just found out they are working on an msx port of risky rick on the msx.org forum. There are a couple threads there about the ColecoVision game and the msx port in progress. Last post by the distributors was last December stating it was taking longer than planned. Nothing heard since. 

[zyzzle]

I read, with very keen interest, the entire kevtris article (before it was unreasonably and inexplicably deleted from the post on this page). I found it to be a highly objective exposure of the fibs and obfuscation which the author of the Risky Rick homebew game put this community through. Although the game seems quite excellent, I certainly do not think it was a fair move, and was very underhanded. I shall not be purchasing any games from that author, either Risky Rick, or any future releases because of this little stint. This is the type of obfuscation that this small community does not need. I congratulate kevtris on his excellent sleuthing efforts and am glad the truth came out.

 

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I'm also interested to know why the link was removed and by whom? I've known about all of this for the past few months as @Ikrananka and I both assisted Kevtris with figuring this out and possibly others as well. The main issue and what caused all of this was the fact that even some stock CVs with little to NO mods were still having issues getting the game to load up. Even after I fixed the grounding issue with pin13 on my CV the game still would refuse to boot up most of the time with a successful boot up only happening about once ever 5 - 8 power ons. Resetting didn't help in my case as Kevtris's article stated. Instead it would seem that some hardware revision changes along with my +5 RAM upgrade was causing the 3rd DRM check to get triggered most of the time on mine. So I was more than a bit hacked off when Kevin finally had it all figured out and sent all the details to us.

 

I'm glad Kevtris finally put this information out there and I hope other devs learn to not follow suit because while there is always a need to protect ones property, it should not be done at the expense of those who legitimately purchase the rights to use said property.

[youki]

1 hour ago, -^Cro§Bow^- said:

 while there is always a need to protect ones property, it should not be done at the expense of those who legitimately purchase the rights to use said property.

200% agree with that !

[MegaManFan]

So are we censoring legitimate discussion of DRM which breaks a game now? Because it's not like people can't find "redacted" just by going to Kevtris' blog. I find this a little frightening and Orwellian to be honest. If the developer put something in the cartridge to not make it work on emulators, clone consoles, or modified original CV systems and then LIED about having done so, that's shady as <curse word redacted>. If you're going to put DRM in your game, just be honest about it. Don't tell people "Oh sorry the game doesn't work in your ColecoVision, I don't know why." In the words of my British friends, that's bollocks.

[Albert]

Calm down, someone, presumably one of the developers, asked us to remove the link.  I hadn't looked at this thread until now, and see that it was a link to Kevtris' blog.  I've restored the link.  But please don't post any ROMs of the game directly here in the forum.

 

 ..Al

[MegaManFan]

2 minutes ago, Albert said:

Calm down, someone, presumably one of the developers, asked us to remove the link.  I hadn't looked at this thread until now, and see that it was a link to Kevtris' blog.  I've restored the link.  But please don't post any ROMs of the game directly here in the forum.

 

 ..Al

Of course not my friend. I've never posted a link to a ROM, never would. Thank you for restoring the link to Kev's blog.

[Swami]

4 hours ago, -^Cro§Bow^- said:

I'm also interested to know why the link was removed and by whom? I've known about all of this for the past few months as @Ikrananka and I both assisted Kevtris with figuring this out and possibly others as well. The main issue and what caused all of this was the fact that even some stock CVs with little to NO mods were still having issues getting the game to load up. Even after I fixed the grounding issue with pin13 on my CV the game still would refuse to boot up most of the time with a successful boot up only happening about once ever 5 - 8 power ons. Resetting didn't help in my case as Kevtris's article stated. Instead it would seem that some hardware revision changes along with my +5 RAM upgrade was causing the 3rd DRM check to get triggered most of the time on mine. So I was more than a bit hacked off when Kevin finally had it all figured out and sent all the details to us.

 

I'm glad Kevtris finally put this information out there and I hope other devs learn to not follow suit because while there is always a need to protect ones property, it should not be done at the expense of those who legitimately purchase the rights to use said property.

I was having the grounding issue on one of my av modded systems, which was causing the game to go into demo mode. After I fixed this, I kept getting a yellowish-black screen with a hum. I got the same on an unmodified stock system, for which I’ve tried to fix the “grounding problem” a couple times. However, the grounding issue would cause demo mode, not the blank screen and, since reset does not help, I’m pretty sure now it is the boot check for the 8 ascii characters causing the crash on boot of which kevtris spoke.   I have a third system that was av modded that it does work with, so, one out of three.